Event Registration - Do You Really Need to Know That?

With online event registration systems, it's easy to add fields to your form, but before you start adding them consider these points.

Each field that you add to your form adds a little bit more complexity. On their own, a few extra fields may not seem like much, but how easy your form appears to use at first glance is a factor in how many people actually complete it.

If your form appears long, cluttered or asks for irrelevant details, people can be turned off and abandon their registration. Some may intend to come back when they have more time, but many never do.

When you're setting up your form, consider these points before adding a field:

1. Do I really need this information? It might be nice to collect demographic details, such as how many employees are in a company, but will knowing this help you to put on a better event? 2. Am I really going to use this information? For example, you probably don't need to ask for the names of each ticket holder on a ticket sales form if you aren't printing name badges for the event. 3. Will this field cause registrants to be concerned about how you are using the data? For example, asking for age or home phone number when it's a business related event. 4. Will I get good data from this field? If people don't want to provide certain information that you are asking for, then they may just make up data, which is worse than not having it at all.

Special points on forms selling tickets

If you have an online ticket sales form, you should give some special consideration to asking people to submit the names of each ticket holder. For planning purposes it would be great to know all of the names of each ticket holder before the event, but for many events, the more important goal is to get the tickets sold.

If you are expecting or hoping for people to buy several tickets or a full table at a time, asking them to enter all of the names could be seen as too much trouble. In cases like this, people may not even know the names of the people using the tickets at the time of purchase and if names are entered, there is no guarantee that those will be the people showing up to the event since tickets may get passed around.

In general, try to keep your forms as short as possible, but also consider the people you are inviting, the type of event and how you expect people to use the form when deciding on the fields.

If you have any questions about fields you are thinking about adding to your form, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss them with you.

Jim is the president of ePly, an event registration software that makes event registration software a breeze. For more information about online registration software please visit http://www.eply.com

Getting people to register and commit to your event isn't easy. Even people wanting and planning to attend often leave signing up until the deadline. Meanwhile, you need cash flow and really don't need the extra stress of waiting for people to commit.

This tip is about the critical step of linking your event website, email marketing or other promotional material to your online registration form. Done right, this link will actually increase the number of registrations you get. If you don't give careful attention to this step, you could be missing out on registrations and end up missing out on revenue.